Emergency Medical Doctor

So you say overcrowding is an issue at your hospital. Your ED is regularly filled with admitted holds (patients admitted to the hospital waiting for beds, for those non-emergency affiliated readers).  Your emergency nursing staff is burdened with inpatient care that they are not familiar with providing and/or documenting.  Your ED docs ...

NJ ACEP in an effort to push overcrowding and surge capacity to the forefront recently held a townhall meeting/press conference on the topic.  This was through a grant from national ACEP. The event was featured by the following press agencies: The Record, NJ 101.5 radio and a letter to the editor in the Star Ledger, among ...

The other day I saw a patient with abdominal pain.  The patient had the pain for some time.  They had a CT scan of the abdomen at an outpatient radiology facility the day before.  I asked if she knew the result, and she said, “No, but can't you just pull it up off of your computer?” The answer of course was ...

This article per Reuter's reveals something that I am not surprised about. Physicians especially in their privat offices are not using computers to document patient records, write prescriptions or to track patients' routine preventative care.  Working at a facility where in the Emergency Department we do use all computerized systems I would ...

Has anyone noticed the overabundance of people wearing iPods while they are working?  In fact I even witnessed a nurse in my ED wearing one while she was working.  I really did not know how to react. Turns out she isn’t the only one and staff have been reprimanded for it.  Now don’t get me wrong, I do not have a problem ...

It astounds me how many job opportunities there are for Emergency Physicians all around the country.  Every time I get the Annals of Emergency Medicine or Emergency Medicine News I browse the classifieds to see what is out there.  I am pretty secure in my current position...I've been at the same job, with the same group, at the same ...

I know there are a lot of people out their who talk about how to manage your time. How to get the most out of your business day.  Utilizing your weekend time to fit in the projects you wish to complete. But wait....what about managing the things you do in your life not from the perspective of time but what about quality use of that ...

You know the concept of protocol driven medicine has been around for a long time.  Originally, developed to save money and perhaps time, where have they gone? Who uses them?  The Ottawa ankle and knee rules, Nexis cervical spine criteria, Wells criteria for ruling out a pulmonary embolus are all excellent.  I personally have used ...

GruntDoc quotes today the status of the Tort Reform Laws that took place in the last year. For those of us in the Northeast, we need to watch this closely. If it truly is working than we need to continue to fight for similar reforms in every state. I like the part where it says that hospitals used money saved on malpractice premiums to improve ...

It is easy to become discouraged in a job where the potential to do harm to another human being is so high.  Literally every patient you see, every medication you order, and every procedure you do is a bomb on the  side of the road about to blow up in your face. Even if you as the physician are not the one who does anything wrong, you ...